Good morning and welcome to today's New York City hearing on committee on the sanitation solid waste management.

At this time during today's hearing, no one may approach the dais.

Please silence annual training devices that you may have.

Chair, you may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management.

I am Justin Sanchez, Councilmember and Chair of this committee.

Thank you all for joining us today, and truly, truly, truly apologize for uh the delay in this morning's proceedings.

Um, that is not the way that we like to operate on this committee.

Um, so really apologize, and thank you for everyone for being here on time.

Um, it is truly appreciated.

Um, and also working with us to change the committee to an earlier time because the entire plan was to get everyone out earlier, um, if I hadn't been too late.

Um, so uh thank you everyone.

Um, and I'd also like to acknowledge the council members who are uh with us here today.

Uh Councilmember Lewis, Councilmember Zhuang, uh Councilmember Carr, oh, minority leader carr, um, and Councilmember Chanel Thomas Henry.

Um, and uh I know that Councilmember uh Virginia Maloney was also here and will be rejoining to join us uh shortly.

So the purpose of today's hearing is to hear six bills, five of which are sponsored by Councilmember Sandy Nurse.

Intro 70 number 75 would amend the Department of Sanitation's enforcement routing program to allow for businesses to receive fines for sidewalk cleanliness violations during their hours of operations, or between the hours of 8 a.m.

and 7 p.m.

Intro number 353 would establish a commercial waste zone working group.

Intro number 356 would require DSNY to adopt rules allowing community composers to charge the public for organic waste collection at drop-off sites and allow community composters to sell compost generated from drop-off sites to the public.

Intro number 367 would require DSNY to accept and process commercial solid waste at all city-owned or operated marine and rail transfer stations and to publicly report the amount and type of waste received at such stations on an annual basis.

And intro number 369 would require DSNY to establish one or more organic waste composting facilities in each borough.

We will also be hearing intro 911A, sponsored by Councilmember David Carr, which would require DSNY to enter into agreements with six commercial waste haulers for the borough of Staten Island, Staten Island, and delay implementation of the Staten Island commercial waste zone until February 1st, 2028.

I will now turn it over to Councilmember Carr to provide a statement on his bill.

Thank you, Chair.

Uh I appreciate you having this hearing today, and I really want to commend you on your leadership of the committee throughout the course of this year.

Uh I look forward to continuing to work with you and improving our quality of life across all of our boroughs.

And I just want to welcome our our friend uh here today.

I can promise you my cats, if they were here, would not be as well behaved as he is.

Um Commissioner, always a pleasure to see you.

Um I really appreciate your partnership since you returned to the agency um and uh working on all host of issues to improve quality of life for Staten Islanders, and I really want to thank um everyone at the sanitation department, particularly in the borough operations in Staten Island and Brooklyn for the phenomenal job they do each and every week.

Um Introduction 911A is introduced, I think, to resolve uh a problem that has arisen as a result of the implementation of the commercial waste zones.

Uh in my view, when I was a part of um the work of my predecessor, Steve Matteo, uh, he opposed this legislation because he felt that it was a solution to a problem in some parts of our city, but not one that we were facing in Staten Island and yet created negative externalities for our borough.

Uh we had a perfectly working uh market situation in Staten Island with respect to commercial carding, and there were not the negative consequences that you're seeing in other places where you had multiple carters serving blocks, different businesses had different contracts, um, and the you know the negative results that attended to that, you know, namely uh congestion, uh uh truck traffic and noise at unfortunate hours and just repeated visits by different trucks on the same block.

That was never something we experienced on Staten Island, and so this is a solution that is great for other parts of the city and not necessarily one that was needed in Staten Island, but we are now limited as Staten Islanders and who we can choose to contract with.

Um, and I'm generally speaking against those kind of market interferences because I think consumers should have a choice that they should have a choice as to who their carter is.

And in particular, I'm concerned about the possibility that long-time Staten Island businesses would then be cut out of a market in which they have been ably serving for a number of years.

Additionally, you know, I'm concerned about one of the other consequences of this legislation, which is that before a uh a CWZ could even be implemented, or before an award could even become operational, you have uh companies that are seeking to sell uh before they even begin the work of their award.

And I think that creates the possibility where uh an awardee inflates the value of their company in order to be sold and without ever having you know done any of the work.

And I think that's something that we have to guard against.

We have to protect the department, we have to protect the taxpayer, and we have to protect the consumers in each of the zones.

And so that is why I'm putting forward Introduction 9-11A because I think we need a pause on the implementation of the CWZ, and I think we also need to make sure that Staten Islanders have as many choices as they can, and I think the unique circumstances that we have in our borough justify doing things differently there than we would do in the other commercial waste zones.

And so I urge my colleagues to be supportive of this legislation, and I look forward to hearing testimony from the department.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, uh Minority Leader Carr.

Um, I look forward to the dialogue today, and I would like to thank everyone on my team for their work on this legislation.

Uh, we will start by.

Oh, I also want to recognize Councilmember uh Vernakoff who has joined us via Zoom, and recognize that Councilmember uh Maloney is now with us in person.

Uh we will uh start by hearing testimony from DSNY, then we will turn it over uh to hear testimony from members of the public.

Uh, and I will now turn it over to our committee council to administer the oath.

Good morning, Councilman.

Uh Commissioner Anderson, assistant commissioner Marshall, and Director Jen McDonnell.

Do you have may you please raise your right hands?

Thank you.

Do you affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth when testifying and responding to council member questions today?

I do.

Thank you, maybe again.

Great.

Uh good morning, Chair Sanchez and members of the Committee on Sanitation and Solid Waste Management.

I'm Gregory Anderson, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Sanitation, and I'm joined by Jen McDonnell, Deputy Commissioner for Solid Waste Management, and Frank Marshall, Assistant Commissioner for the Bureau of Commercial Waste.